From hence we went to the cathedral, in which is St. Sebald's Tomb, highly deserving of the stranger's notice. This church contains the oldest metal font in Germany; it was formerly used in baptising the emperor's children. The saint's tomb, by Fisher, is a masterpiece of workmanship, executed in 1508; there is also a curious figure of the artist himself. The tomb is a pretty Gothic structure, cast in bronze, and the body of the saint enclosed in a silver coffin, under an elegant Gothic canopy. We next proceeded to the picture gallery, which contains a good collection of paintings by German artists, in good preservation. From hence we went to the imperial castle, where there is growing a Lime tree, _Tilia europæa_, said to be seven hundred years old. I measured the girth of this tree, at four feet from the ground, and found it to be fifteen feet in circumference; it still appeared in a pretty healthy state.
The dining room in this ancient castle, formerly used by the king, is of large dimensions, and contains a large number of old paintings, which are in good preservation; the rooms although uninhabited for the last four hundred years are still in good condition. From the windows in this castle we have a beautiful prospect of the town as well as of a considerable extent of country. On our return from hence we visited the house in which Albert Durer resided, which is now converted into a gallery for modern paintings, exhibited for sale, many of which appeared to be most beautiful pieces of art, and objects of great interest to numerous visitors who were then present admiring them. By this time it was drawing near the hour we had to start by the diligence. We made the best of our way back to the hotel, and got all ready by one o'clock, the appointed hour of our departure from Nuremberg, which is a town of considerable size, containing a population of upwards of thirty thousand people.
In the environs are large tracts of ground under vegetable culture, but I was unable to learn of the existence of any botanic garden or good nursery establishment in the immediate neighbourhood. Large fields of tobacco were cultivated in the suburbs, as well as extensive plantations of the _Hop_, which appeared very prolific. The soil we passed from Nuremberg to Munich was more sandy than it previously had been; the scenery is also more flat and less varied than in our preceding stages.